May 23rd, 2010..The Day of the Show

All week I was watching the weather report. Each day the report had pictures of clouds and rain except for Sunday, May 23rd. Each time I checked, everything was changing but the sun was still there for the 23rd. I had gone over every aspect of this car show in my mind, over and over. Now, if everyone would just follow through with their assigned tasks.

The day of the show was here! We had loaded up two trucks the night before and secured them for the night. We got up at 5:30 AM because we wanted to be at the park in Moxee by 7AM. The park is 20 miles from home. When we arrived at the park, three vendors were waiting. I immediately started working with them so they could set up. They all needed power. Oh, the Weather? Cold and clear, slight breeze with no rain.

Vehicles started arriving at about 8AM. I had asked the members to park the vehicles a little tighter this year. Everything was going good so far. Registration started out smooth as the PA system was being finished up and event signage was going up. We had put the speakers on a high scaffold this year so that the sound might travel farther. I checked it out later and found that it worked perfectly.

We had a successful show last year but with this being our 10th anniversary and our 10th annual show we were doing everything bigger this year. We had more vendors this year than ever before. While other shows have only one food vendor, we had four and an espresso van. While other shows have no merchandise vendors, we had seven. This year we had more trophies than ever before. Each set of trophies (1st, 2nd, 3rd) were sponsored in 22 classes. In addition to the classes we had trophies for best of show, best interior, best paint, distance, participants choice, kids choice, poker walk (hi and low) as well as two other game trophies and cash prizes. We also had a participant who gave out four trophies of his own. Total trophies...80. More games, more free magazines, more give-a-ways, more raffle items, more cars this year and more of everything else. We even sold t-shirts. All this, but we didn't have a single bicycle register this year. Oh, and Weather? Cool, clear With no rain...yet.

The cars kept coming! The registration line was getting long and we finally ended up with about 177 entries at the show along with about 30 club vehicles which we don't ever count (at this show anyway). Everyone did their jobs very well and the show went quite smoothly. We created more excitement with a Minute to Win It stacking game, an Automotive trivia contest and a poker walk. We had so many door prizes to give away that we called car numbers during the entire show. A person could also buy tickets for a dollar and take a chance on winning one or more of the valuable prizes we had to offer. We gave away a shop vac, tool boxes, floor jacks, air compressors, canopy chairs, clocks, gas money, ceramics, car parts, and autographed posters by famous people in the automotive design and drag racing industries. The raffle items raised over $700. Tickets were sold for the 50/50 by the Make a Wish Foundation and an additional $370 was raised with the raffling of a generator. The club will in turn kick in another $500 to Make A Wish. The weather? About 2 PM the wind came up and it felt "wet"..Sun was hiding.

People were starting to get impatient as the sky got darker. We had much to do yet, and so the raffle items, auction and trophy presentation was started at 2:30 PM. An hour later the show was brought to a close.

What a day, What a Show! I think people will be talking about this one for a long time to come.